How to become your own stop motion animator

If you've got some extra time this summer, get creative with this little film project.

I've been fascinated with stop-motion animation from childhood. Still, growing up in the 1980s, the cost and knowledge barrier to entry for anything greater than a flip book was just too high for me. Fortunately things have changed immensely, and today all you need to make one is a camera and a computer.

Now, movement can be simulated with a series of pictures that change slightly with each exposure. But it takes quite a bit of timing and skill to make a great or even good video using this technique. Lacking this, something passable can be made with items you probably have around your house. Don't expect this to be easy though, the early motion picture rule was 24 different pictures had to be taken per second of video if you wanted a somewhat realistic effect. A slower frame rate can be used, but things won't appear to flow smoothly.

I've tried this technique several times, but one of my favorite creations is called “Birth of a PVC Man,” which, at 21 seconds long, took my friend Jason Underwood and me several hours to shoot and produce. Additionally, I had to actually build the PVC man, as detailed here.

The setup

To take pictures for this video, I used a Canon T2i camera mounted to a tripod. A remote trigger was used to keep from having to physically manipulate it for every shot. Jason manipulated and triggered the camera, while I moved and slowly assembled the PVC man.

I could have done both myself, but having someone helping saved a massive amount of time. Besides, it was great to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Shooting

When shooting this little film, we had to think about how far the head or arms would move in one second and divide this up according to how many frames per second the video would show. This particular video was produced at a somewhat choppy 10 frames per second, so for the roughly 16 seconds of motion, we took 161 frames! It took some patience, but eventually we got the shots we needed.

Production

For this video, I used a batch photo processor called “Phatch” to shrink the images to a usable size (640 x 427) for my modestly powered computer. From here, we converted the photos converted into an animated GIF using GIMP, a free Photoshop-like program. If you prefer, GIMP can be used to convert files with the Batch Image Manipulation (BIMP) extension. These photos can then be imported into your video production software to be animated.

In the past, I've imported the animated GIF into the Windows XP version of Movie Maker, which is able to handle such files. This is a reasonable choices if you really want to only use free tools, even though it doesn't allow you to set the duration shorter than 1/8th of a second. To make the video have a higher frame rate, one has to produce the movie, then re-import the resulting video. You can then increase the video speed appropriately. Apparently iMovie has similar restrictions—.1 second per frame minimum—so this technique should be applicable to Mac users as well.

If that seems like a lot of work, you're absolutely correct. With my new SSD-equipped hardware and better software—CyberLink PowerDirector—things have improved. I can now just import the images directly into this program, and speed up the duration to 1/24th of a second (or whatever I had in mind). This skips the photo editing procedure altogether.

Some improvements on PVC Man’s origin

There are a few improvements on this video that would have made it even better. A different lighting setup, including eliminating shadows, would be the first on this list. Also, keeping the camera's settings constant, rather than letting the camera's processor decide what was best for each shot would have resulted in a greater consistency between frames.

Try it Yourself

Even if you don't have a DSLR camera like the one used in this video, you can do the same thing using something much cheaper. For my first stop-motion videos, I actually used an Env2 “feature” phone. If you're reading this website, there's a good chance you have something better available, so why not give it a try?

Jeremy Cook is an engineer with 10 years experience. In his spare time, he's an avid maker and experimenter, and he enjoys writing about his passion. Follow him on Twitter@JeremySCook.